Slurp

Posted on September 13, 2010 by packleader

Dogs eat differently than we do. May not be rocket science, but I think it’s worth noting with an example. Today for lunch I bought some calves liver (obviously not my lunch). The slices of liver were enormous and, personally, I find it pretty disgusting stuff. Rather than cut it up, I decided to see how Evey would handle it. Stuck it right on top of the rest of her meal. The liver slice was probably 8 inches long, a couple inches wide, and 1/4 inch thick. And slimy.

She swallowed it whole. Instantly. Just slurped it up the way she does, taking it on her tongue and then using some flick of the head and mouth that is clearly instinctive, and it was just gone. No chewing, she took it down like an oyster shooter.

I have seen her do that with small pieces of meat and decent sized chunks of ground burger, but the sheer size of this liver made the feat impressive. I was very curious to see how she handled it, and she did not disappoint.

Later in the afternoon, I was had some raw carrot, and I gave her a small piece. Probaly 1.5 inches long, from the thin end. She proceeded to take it into her mouth and chew it, spit it out, chew the pieces, take more in her mouth, spit it out, chew, chew, chew, sit for awhile, chew more. You get the picture. 20 minutes later, she was still working on it, and now there were tiny pieces of carrot in various places around the house. I have a hunch I’m going to finding pieces of that carrot over the next week.

I don’t know if this means she prefers a nice juicy slab of liver to a refreshing hunk of raw veggie, but they definitely do not eat like we do.

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Nice to meet you, sorry, I peed

Posted on September 13, 2010 by packleader

Evey has a little problem. When she meets people she gets insanely excited. It’s like an entirely different mode of being. She flips out. She scoots over low to the ground but at warp speed, zips around their legs, rolls over onto her back, and shakes. To call her a spaz would be an understatement. We are trying to work on this, but it’s hard when you’re not in a particularly controlled environment.

Like today.

A group of people were outside our house, and I was taking her out to run some errands. She was off leash and we were casually walking to my car, as we do, letting her sniff around. I stopped to say hi to the folks, and when she saw them, she went bezerk and shot over to them, covered about 40 feet in .2 seconds.

When she got to them, they of course started ooing and awing and she flipped and just peed. A couple of times. This is not the first time she’s done this.

She has the excitability issue, but when it comes to new people who respond to her, she doesn’t seem to be able to control her pee. I’m sure this is just a component of the excitability thing, but I haven’t got a clue how to work on it other than to acclimate her to meeting people in more controlled circumstances so that the ones I can’t control, or have less control over, are more manageable.

I would also note that if I had her on leash, that wouldn’t have been as much of an issue. I can control her energy to a greater extent on leash, and she certainly would not have been allowed to run over there, a brown bullet leaking fluids.

Will report back on how this behavior develops. Hopefully with some improvement.

Posted in Bahaviors, Pee and Poo | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Red bell peppers

Posted on September 12, 2010 by packleader

As if I wasn’t already well aware, I am finding much of the information I glean from Internet sites to be suspect. I added a few pieces of red bell pepper to Evey’s raw bowl  for the last couple of meals, building on the broccoli and cauliflour she’s already getting. I can report with some confidence that she does not digest them. Don’t ask me how I know. ;)

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They’re not kids

Posted on September 11, 2010 by packleader

Evey has an eye infection, she gets little “sleepies” (wet, grey globs of gook) below her eye ducts all day long. The doc prescribed some sort of antibiotic. It’s a topical for the eye, so I have to hold her still and somehow get a gel coming out of a little tube directly onto her eyeball without poking it out. Kind of tricky, and she struggles, though I have to say – less than I would.

She handles it quite well, really, not wining or barking or even trying to get away until the tube gets really close to her eye. But it’s still a challenge. And when I’m done, it feels in a way like I have punished her, or put her through an ordeal, and so she needs to be rewarded. But the fact is, she wasn’t punished, she knew she wasn’t punished, and when we were done, the only one feeling bad about the whole thing was me. It’s stupid to give her a treat then, all I’m doing is trying to make myself feel better.

They’re not kids, she was fine the minute I let her go. Another example of paying attention to how they’re really acting rather than imposing some emotional state on them that does not really exist. Listen to your dog!

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It’s a cage

Posted on September 9, 2010 by packleader

There seems to be an inclination to speak about cage training your animal with perhaps a more politically correct “crate” training label. Some of the products out there even call themselves “crates.” Maybe this sounds better and sells more products. Maybe it helps the feeble minded amongst us sleep better at night.

It’s not a crate, it’s a cage.

A crate is a box with an open top that you put shit into. It could also be some kind of shipping container, again for inanimate stuff. A cage is something with a door with a lock on it that you put a living entity into.

By calling it a crate, it’s almost like people are ashamed of what they are doing. Get over it. Dogs don’t mind it at all, if you do it right. My pup now goes in there on her own to sleep, it’s one of her favorite crash spots in the house. It’s not inhumane, it doesn’t bother them, and it’s a great way to house break your pup.

So can we just call it what it is?

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We have a water dog!

Posted on September 8, 2010 by packleader

Evey has always hated the water. Frightened of it, more like. It has been a trial to get her in the tub for a bath. She runs from the hose when we water the garden. And she’s a lab. I mean, she’s got webbed feet.

We all went to a nearby lake today. My gf and I were sitting on the end of the dock. We had Evey off leash because she’s so freaked about the water we did not expect her to do anything except poke around, like she always does.

Well, she was going up and down that dock for 10 minutes or so, checking out the water, then running along another 10 feet. We were haning out in the sun, not paying much attention. She’s a freak, after all.

Finally, all the way at the end of the dock, she’s leaning over looking intently at the water (the dock is about 2 feet off the water). I happened to be looking at her and was watching how intently she was looking at her shadow in the water.

Then, all of sudden, she just dives straight into the water. She was not off balance or slipped or anything, she went for it. It was not a jump up and splash, it was a nose pointed into an aggressive dive, she was under for like 4-5 seconds.

The splash freaked us both out as we were totally mellow, sunning in the 90+ degree weather.

After she popped up, she swam all the way to shore. We had to call her along the dock (the dock was too high, no way we could pull her out). I’m not sure she would have gone directly to the shore if we hadn’t been calling to her the whole time, she did not look freaked out at all. That was a 60 foot first swim.

Despite the surprise, it was totally hilarious! And I am so psyched our dog is not defective. We do have a water dog after all!

Posted in Exercise, Play Time | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Bad advice

Posted on September 1, 2010 by packleader

I read somewhere on the net someone recommending that for puppies, you let them have as much as they can eat in a 10 minute window. Sounds like a nice idea in theory, but it’s insane if you have a dog like Evey.

When we feed Evey kibble, she can finish 1.5 cups in less than a minute. She sucks them up like a hoover, chewing only occasionally, if ever. If we gave her as much food as she can eat in 10 minutes, she would either explode or be ridiculously overweight.

A cup to 1.5 cups seems like a good range for a 3-6 month old, for a larger breed dog like a lab when feeding 3 times a day. That’s inline with several dog food brands’ recommendations I have checked.

Credit to lolosad.com/fat-dogs.html for the photo. Disturbing and hilarious.

Posted in Food and Diet, Tips | 1 Comment

Raw menu

Posted on September 1, 2010 by packleader

What’s on the menu today? Ground beef, broccoli, cottage cheese, apple, liver, and an egg. Yum.

The chunks of apple and broccoli slow her down. She licks up the proteins and cottage cheese like it was a water bowl, no chewing involved. Oddly (odd because she doesn’t chew her kibble either) she chews the veggies a lot. She works on them for awhile, sometimes spitting a few out of the bowl on the floor then going back to them. She chews and chews and chews.

If it wasn’t for the veggies, she’d finish the meal in under a minute. But with all the chewing and having to work around the veggies (she prioritizes what she eats, presumably by tastiness), it’s 5-7 minutes.

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Lunch is good food

Posted on August 27, 2010 by packleader

Lunch today was another non-kibble meal (all out of Iams and not going back, see http://www.iamscruelty.com/, not trying to support PETA, but, it doesn’t look good).

Bought some chopped (small chunks, not ground) beef, added about a third a cup of cottage cheese, and a third of an apple cut into small chunks. Was curious how she’d handle such a varied bowl with no kibble.

Of course she plowed right thru the beef, she worked around all the apple. I had mixed it all together, so she got the cottage cheese no what. But after she finished up the beef, she started in on the apples. She was very funny trying to chew some of them and really working at. She pulled a few out of the bowl and worked at them. It took her about 2 minutes to finish the beef and another 7 or so to deal with the apples. She eventually made it thru all of them. I think she liked them, she was just getting used to eating them. I may try to chop them into smaller chunks, closer to a kibble size. These were more like small cubes.

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Lunch is served

Posted on August 26, 2010 by packleader

For lunch Evey got her first all-non-Kibble meal. She had about a 1/2C (maybe?) of ground veal, 1 fingerling potato boiled and chopped, 3/4 of one carrot chopped, sweet peas, chopped, one small cooked beet chopped. Pretty nice, eh?

She clearly likes her meat. She managed to eat around all the veggies and get out all the meat (I mixed it up well, so this required a deft tonguing). When she was done with that, she went for the potatoes and beets. The carrots she ate around, even taking a few in her mouth and spitting them out on the floor around her bowl.

She tried to crunch on some of the carrots, but it was pretty clear she was not that interested. I know she can handle crunch given that she eats tons of kibble (not to mention rocks and dirt whenever I’m not looking). But, just to see if it was a texture thing, I boiled the carrots and put them back in her bowl.

She ended up eating 3/4 of them. Obviously boiling helped, but this is possibly the first thing, food or otherwise that I have seen her not eat. Really surprising.

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